Neil Dudley: Well, that ain’t exactly right. Here I am again with another Straight From the Horse’s Mouth episode here on the Cowboy Perspective. And this particular conversation is going to circle around episode one of Yellowstone, and in that episode, there’s a scene where Costner and one of his sons or ranch hands has to run, help a cow that’s having a calf, go ahead and have the calf. They call it pulling a calf. And I want to give Taylor Sheridan, Costner, the producers, executive producers, directors, I don’t know exactly what the structure is of the people that make Yellowstone happen, but I want to give them all a big high five and say great try. But that ain’t exactly right. Most of them probably know that and just couldn’t figure out a way to actually do a realistic calf pulling scene and not have it- I mean, sometimes it lasts a good long time, and it probably would just monopolize that episode’s storyline.
But anyways, I thought for anybody who saw that and thought, wow, that was interesting, that calf just hopped right up and ran off, well then exactly right. When you pull a calf, for all those cowboys, cowgirls, farmers, ranchers out there that have actually done the work, it just doesn’t happen quite like that. It’s a lot more scary, slimy, dynamic, beautiful, all of those things wrapped into one. Bringing a new baby calf into the world and you want to do it quick enough so the cow doesn’t hurt anymore then she has to. You want to do it so the calf doesn’t hurt. You want to do it so the calf can stay alive, and the mom doesn’t get sick. There’s just a lot of things to think about. I’ve been there before. I didn’t get there in time and the calf didn’t make it, or the mom didn’t make it. And that’s really sad. So, you want to get there, you want to know what you’re doing. And sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing. Sometimes it happens in a way where you just have to make it up as you go. But the objective is to have a healthy, happy baby calf and mama cow when you’re done.
Now, for those of you that might be interested in knowing exactly how that works if you’ve never done it before or never seen it before, I searched the internet, which didn’t take but about five seconds, just typed in pulling a calf, I’m going to have Johnny put a couple of these links in the show notes. Now, in full disclosure and as a disclaimer, it’s graphic, it’s going to show the birth of a baby calf. There’s going to be a cow bellowing, there’s chains, there’s calf pulling devices. It’s a little ratchet system that you’ll get the chains on the calf’s feet. Then you hook them to a pulley system and help pull the calf out. But if you watch to the end, you’ll find that in these situations, there are very happy endings, the baby calf. In one of them, the guy gets the baby calf pulled out and that calf, he looks dead. He swings him around a little bit, get some centrifugal force to get the fluid out of the calf’s lungs and nose and mouth. And in just a little time, you’ll see that calf- they’re so resilient, animals, even babies of our- Nurses in the labor and delivery room don’t necessarily handle these babies with the most soft hands; they kind of pop them up, slap them on the back, do whatever it is to kind of get them cleared up so they can get that first breath. That’s important. Same thing for a calf. I’ve seen my dad give a calf mouth to mouth. I’ve seen videos of guys doing it for baby deer, all kinds of stuff. Anyways, the point of the episode is just to say good job to Yellowstone for putting that reality of farming and ranching into the show. And then here’s just a little more insight to give those of you who might think oh, cool, well that wasn’t exactly how it works, I’d be interested to know a way to find that out.
Thanks everybody for following the Cowboy Perspective, listening, especially to these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth episodes that give you a little deeper insight into the things that happen on the Cowboy Perspective or from a cowboy perspective. Thank you so much for listening. Tell a friend if you don’t mind. I’d sure appreciate it. Talk to you later.
I hope you guys found some value in this quick conversation. I’m going to be doing these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, trying to nail down some specific things on topics for everyone so you get a little quicker listen. And if you want to get deeper, you can listen to these full episodes. Thanks everybody for listening.
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Now for your listening pleasure, a little Traversing the Trail from Mr. Byron Hill.